Acharya Prashant explains that true knowing is not separate from experience; they are one and the same. When we attempt to separate knowing from experience, a distance is created, and we end up merely knowing 'about' the experience rather than knowing the experience itself. This separation occurs because the mind seeks to name, categorize, and judge experiences based on past memories and preferences. By naming an experience as 'joy' or 'sorrow', we lose its purity and immediacy. He uses the analogy of a potato being cooked into 'dum aloo' to illustrate how we process and distort raw experience before it reaches our consciousness, thereby losing its freshness. He further clarifies that pure experience is immediate and lacks form, color, or name. It is innocent and powerful. We often fail to value this pure experience because it seems too simple, preferring instead the complex conclusions we draw after much thought. Acharya Prashant emphasizes that language itself is a tool of the past, making it impossible to accurately describe a fresh experience without 'cooking' it. Therefore, what we say about our experiences is often untruthful, as it is tailored to the listener or our own internal biases. Finally, the speaker addresses the difficulty of listening without judgment. He asserts that if one's life is characterized by constant comparison and measurement in daily matters—such as status, money, or social standing—it is impossible to listen to spiritual truths without also weighing and measuring them. To truly listen and experience life without the lag of the past, one must rectify their entire way of living. True knowing requires the cessation of using past knowledge as a scale to validate the present moment.
